


You Only Hold Me Up Like This

by celeste9



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Dubious Consent, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Sex (Star Wars), Inappropriate Use of the Force, M/M, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Polyamory, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Secrets, Unhappy Ending, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 01:01:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13423389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: Rey’s unasked for bond with Kylo Ren brings further complications when she becomes involved with Poe. Kylo thinks she’s fooling herself; Rey thinks that having Kylo in her head – and, thus, in a fashion, in her bed – doesn’t mean she can’t keep Poe, who makes her happy and treats her like the person Rey wants to believe she is.Kylo watches Rey fuck her rebel lover, convinced she will realize it isn’t right, but finds his past still continues to haunt him. Rey tells herself that she will never be like Kylo, but as she spirals into an ever-growing circle of secrets and lies, she starts to fear she might be more like him than she wants to admit.





	You Only Hold Me Up Like This

**Author's Note:**

> I felt that post-TLJ what I really needed to create was skeevy Force bond smut, lol, so here it is, with extra angst and feelings. Thanks to @poerosehux (ElanneH) and @zuotian3619 for reassurance and extremely helpful suggestions, anything wonky I've left in is all on me. And as always thanks to my RL friend who puts up with my moaning constantly. Title from Fall Out Boy.

Rey doesn’t know he’s watching, at least not at first. She is too preoccupied.

Her lips are parted and her eyes closed; there is sweat dotting her forehead. The emotions that play across her face are strangely fascinating and Kylo can’t look away. She breathes out a sigh, and then a moan; her eyes open.

She is not pleasuring herself; her hands are roaming over an indistinct form that Kylo can’t quite see, rather than her own body. Kylo assumes the partner is male, though he supposes he has no real basis for this assumption.

The partner is murmuring to her, Kylo can tell, and Rey’s nails scrape down his back. The man – he is fairly certain it is a man now – seems peculiarly familiar, though Kylo doesn’t know why. Something about the impression Kylo gets through the Force, his personal signature, something about the way he feels in Rey’s head. He hovers on the edge of recognition, just out of sight, and Kylo has an odd sense that he should _know._

Kylo watches Rey’s face and knows she is getting closer to her release. Her cheeks are flushed and her hair is a wild mess; Kylo has never seen her like this before.

Then she trembles and shakes, and a name falls from her lips.

“Poe!”

Kylo’s lips thin. Dameron. Of course. Of course it’s kriffing Dameron. He wonders if he would have preferred the traitor.

Like a whisper on the air he can hear, _That’s it, baby,_ and Rey shudders through her orgasm, Dameron rocking against her, his fingers in between them.

Then Rey’s eyes fly to his, and Kylo knows that she knows; he knows that she sees him now. Her cheeks redden further, though he thinks it’s in anger more than embarrassment.

Kylo slides out of her mind.

-

Rey feels him leave, though she never noticed when he arrived.

She is still coming down from her high and Poe is still moving against her, so the idea that Kylo was watching her with Poe, unnoticed, seems less pressing than it maybe should. She comes again, and a third time, and it isn’t until she is lying with Poe slumbering gently beside her that she allows herself to dwell on Kylo Ren.

She should have known, she thinks; she has always been able to feel him before. She wonders if it is simply that Poe takes so much of her focus, or that she was too intent on her own pleasure, on the way that Poe makes her feel.

She isn’t pleased now. Kylo Ren had been watching her like a voyeur, hiding in her mind during what should be the most private of acts. She doesn’t know if she loves Poe but he is important to her, treasured, as is their time together. It is not something she wishes to share, and certainly not with Kylo.

Rey feels violated.

She doesn’t tell Poe.

-

She is fucking Dameron again.

She is sitting on his cock, head thrown back, and a voice Kylo wants to ignore is saying, _she’s beautiful, blast, she’s beautiful,_ and Kylo wants to shut them out but he can’t pull away. Rey’s pleasure echoes in his own head and she _is_ beautiful. Dameron doesn’t deserve her; he doesn’t understand her. Dameron _can’t_ understand her.

He never understood Kylo, either.

Rey catches on to his presence quicker this time, growling, “Get out,” and Kylo gets a sense of Poe’s confusion.

But Rey leans down and kisses him, swallows his question. She rolls her hips and Dameron comes inside her, short nails scraping down Rey’s back.

Kylo bites his lip and when he reaches down between his legs, his fingertips are wet with someone else’s come.

Interesting.

-

“Kylo,” Rey says, when Poe is asleep. She is quiet because she knows Poe sleeps lightly, always ready to be needed.

She sees him like a dark shadow against the opposite wall, looming.

“Is he good?” Kylo asks. “I suppose he must be adequate; you certainly are loud enough.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“I’m not the one connected to one person and fucking someone different.”

“You think I want this?” Rey senses her voice getting louder and glances to Poe; he remains still, his breathing even. “I want you the hell out of my head!”

Kylo crosses his arms over his chest. “The bond lingers even after I killed Snoke. There is a reason for that.”

“If you think I’ve changed my mind, I haven’t.”

Kylo’s face is more expressive than he would probably like, so even though he ignores Rey’s words, she can see he is hurt by them. “Have you told him?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“So you haven’t. Why, I wonder? Are you ashamed?”

“You’re the one who’s being a creep,” Rey says, but she is flushing because she knows that wasn’t what he meant.

Rey hasn’t told Poe about any of it.

“He doesn’t mean that much to you, then,” Kylo says, and there is something in his face that makes Rey think he is glad of it.

“You don’t know anything,” she says, anger rising in her chest. “Poe is good and kind like you could never be, and he makes me happy.”

“I fucked him first,” Kylo says, and it is clearly intended to wound.

“You’re a liar,” Rey snarls.

The twitch of Kylo’s lips is cruel. “Ask him, then.”

“I don’t need to. You lie about everything.”

“Not everything,” Kylo says.

His presence fades.

Rey fumes at the wall where he used to be. It’s a lie. It has to be; Poe would _never –_

But Kylo Ren was once Ben Solo, and Ben Solo had been a boy who was loved.

Could he have been loved by Poe?

Rey curls around Poe and he stirs; he must have been waking already, disturbed by Rey and Kylo.

He nuzzles into her chest. “Hmmm? Rey? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she says, but she feels terrible.

Everything.

“Tell me,” Poe says in a voice that is tinged with sleep but he is alert enough.

And Rey will never settle until she knows.

“Were you with Ben Solo?” Rey whispers to him, afraid of the answer.

“Yes,” comes the reply after only the smallest hesitation, just as soft, murmured into Rey’s skin.

Rey breathes out. She wanted it to be a lie.

“Does that bother you?”

“It’s not my business,” Rey makes herself say.

“He was different,” Poe says. “I guess it’s hard to imagine now but he… He was different. He was my friend and I… I loved him.”

Rey doesn’t say that she knows, that she understands, that she could see a glimmer of the person Kylo Ren used to be. Ben Solo. She doesn’t say that because then she will have to admit to the bond, and to the fact that she is lying to Poe, keeping things from him.

“It’s okay,” she says instead, and strokes Poe’s hair, and he kisses her neck. “Go back to sleep.”

She wishes Kylo had been lying.

-

Kylo is not the one who lies, it seems. Rey is. She lies to her perfect, precious Dameron and honestly, it’s better than Kylo could have wished for.

She keeps Kylo like a dirty secret, or perhaps a treasured one, and Kylo doesn’t actually care which it is. Either way it suits him. Rey hides her attachment to Kylo from her lover, fucks him like there is nothing between them, when Kylo is there all the time.

He will keep the memory of her face when he told her about Dameron like his own secret, to take out and examine when he needs it. So much righteous indignation, that her perfect lover is less perfect than he pretends. Sullied by Kylo.

He wonders how long she lasted before she asked. He expects not very long.

He wonders how Dameron answered.

There are memories in his head, hot summers in the jungle, sticky nights, skinny-dipping. Warm, tentative kisses, adolescent fumbling, whispered promises.

There are other memories, too, admiration sliding to fear and distrust, pleas to stay, heated rows. In the end it doesn’t matter who walked away from whom first. Dameron had never understood.

He won’t understand Rey, either. It is only a matter of time.

And Rey knows it. Even if she won’t admit it, she knows. She keeps her secrets, and she keeps Kylo.

Kylo is the only one who understands, and soon enough Rey will admit it.

-

Rey thinks about them now, and she hates it.

She hates Kylo’s stupid face, honestly she does, but she thinks about how they would look together, their ridiculous hair, Kylo’s skin so pale next to Poe’s, Kylo’s long limbs and broad… everything, and Poe so small and compact.

She wonders what they were like, young, before all that’s happened. She imagines them together and it brings a flush to her skin. She thinks about them in odd moments and feels ashamed, but she doesn’t stop.

Poe startles her when she is sitting near the hangar, thinking of them moving together; he slips down beside her and snakes his arm around her waist, nosing into her hair, and Rey nearly jumps out of her skin.

“Sorry,” he exclaims, laughing. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Normally I can never sneak up on you.”

“I was thinking,” she says, and she must be red as crimson.

“Oh?” he teases, clearly assuming by her face that her thoughts were less than pure. “I won’t be offended if it wasn’t about me, but if it was, I’ve got half an hour to try out whatever it was.”

_I don’t have those parts,_ she thinks, and blushes worse.

Stars but she loathes Kylo Ren.

-

It is a strange thing, Kylo thinks, to watch a woman pleasure a man when you can’t actually see the man.

He is familiar enough with the act to know Rey has Dameron’s cock in her mouth but Dameron remains but an indistinct form Kylo can’t quite make out. He remembers, though, the shape of it, the length; he remembers the taste on his tongue. He remembers the sounds Poe – Dameron – made, even though Kylo was sloppy and unpracticed.

Rey is shouting at Kylo in her head, but he pretends he doesn’t hear. Dameron’s hands are in her hair, he thinks, by the way it moves.

Something burns in Kylo’s chest and he thinks it must be jealousy.

How stupid. As if Dameron could ever have something Kylo would want, as if Kylo could care what these _rebels_ do in their filthy bed on their filthy base.

But he slides a hand down his pants anyway because he feels, kriff, he feels achy and wanting, and his hand is wet with his own pre-come and with Dameron’s, and Rey’s saliva, and Kylo pulls his hand back and wills himself to stop. He pinches his nails into his palms and bites his tongue until this feeling goes away, but when Rey swallows and pulls off her smug little grin is only half for Dameron; the rest is aimed at Kylo.

He feels a rising tide of anger and he follows after Rey when she goes to enclose herself in what Kylo assumes to be the refresher.

“Still a disgusting creep, Kylo,” she tells him, her hands on her hips, so secure in her own righteousness.

“Do you ever do anything but fuck? Can’t be much of a relationship.”

“It’s weird and gross that you spy on us. Are you seriously that lonely? Can’t you find some stormtrooper to suck your dick?’

Kylo raises an eyebrow. “You would like me to find someone like your beloved traitor and make him kneel before me?”

“Ugh! You’re horrible!”

“It was your suggestion.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Rey’s gaze slides past Kylo and she says, much more kindly, “Everything’s fine, Poe, I was just talking to myself.” She lowers her voice. “I want nothing to do with you, and neither does he. Get the hell out of my life.”

She pushes past him and back into the room she must share with Dameron. They are cohabitating, it would seem.

Kylo isn’t jealous.

Rey is lying to Dameron’s face. There is nothing to be jealous of.

-

“What was he to you?” Rey asks, when she and Poe are on their backs beneath the control panel in the cockpit of the _Falcon,_ replacing frayed wiring. “Kylo. Ben. Whatever his name was.”

Ben Solo. As if she doesn’t know.

Poe looks at her, tongue between his teeth. “I told you. My boyfriend. When we were kids. Teenagers.”

“I know, but…”

“Does it matter?”

“Does it?”

Poe pauses. He puts down his wire stripper and tugs at Rey’s wrist, urging her out from beneath the panel with him until they’re sitting cross-legged, knees touching. It’s cramped in front of the seats but Rey doesn’t mind. “Why are you asking?”

Rey shrugs. She hopes she looks as unconcerned as she wants to. “I guess I’m just curious. I don’t… I don’t have anyone. Like that.”

Poe’s face softens. “Ben was the first, but he wasn’t the only one. I have exes, Rey. That doesn’t mean that you mean less to me, because of them.”

“I know.”

He runs his fingers over the back of her hand. “If you want to know about Ben, specifically, because… because of Kylo Ren, that’s okay, too. I’ll tell you what you want to know. I don’t want to keep secrets from you.”

When Poe pauses, Rey’s breath hitches. Secrets. Poe will be honest with her, because that’s who he is, and meanwhile Rey will keep secrets that would hurt him.

Kylo Ren in her _head_ while they _fuck –_

“But Ben was…” Poe hesitates again. “Ben is complicated. It ended messy. It’s messier now. I don’t… I don’t recognize him, in Kylo Ren, but he was important to me.”

_I can see him,_ Rey thinks. Ben, frightened and lonely and searching for purpose. She wonders what Poe would have done, if he had been in that room, and Ben had held out his hand and said, _please,_ his lip trembling.

_I loved him,_ Poe had said. He hasn’t said those words to Rey. She doesn’t know if she wants him to.

In her head, Kylo is saying, _Don’t you do anything but fuck?_ and Rey wonders how it was for him, him and Poe. Were they happy? In love? Did they find it as hard to keep their hands off each other as Rey finds it is to keep hers off Poe? Did they share their secrets, their fears, their dreams?

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Rey says, watching Poe through half-lowered eyelashes. “I shouldn’t have asked. It wasn’t fair.”

Poe takes her hand and kisses her knuckles; Rey smiles at him.

Poe is so easy and simple.

Kylo complicates everything.

-

Kylo can easily probe Rey’s thoughts, so that he knows when she is lying in bed beside Dameron she is content; when she laughs while making repairs to that hunk of junk called the _Millennium Falcon,_ perhaps in company with her lover and his droid, she is genuinely happy; when Dameron fucks her she is not faking her pleasure.

He knows that when Dameron is late returning from a mission Rey fears for him, and when he returns with injuries that require the infirmary she is both worried and relieved as she sits by his bedside and watches him recover. He knows that she doubts herself when she trains in the Force and that she doubts herself even more when she is in the field.

He doesn’t again suggest that she could come to him or that he could train her; that wound feels too raw. She must come to that realization herself.

Kylo sees her only through the bond; though the Resistance and the First Order meet, Kylo has yet to find himself in the same space as Rey.

She is sitting, Kylo thinks, outside the base; he can see the wind ruffle her hair. She is thinking of Dameron, asleep in the infirmary. Her eyes slide into focus on Kylo’s face.

“For someone who calls himself the Supreme Leader,” she says, “you seem to have a lot of free time to watch me.”

“I can’t help when you are shown to me,” Kylo says, though he feels a hot flush.

Rey shrugs.

“Your lover got himself shot down.”

“I suppose you’re pleased.”

“I would’ve asked for more permanent results.”

“So I’d come to you instead?” Rey scoffs.

“That would be your choice, of course,” Kylo demurs. “As always.”

Rey’s gaze is sharp, and her words sharper. “You seem terribly displeased with your own choices. It doesn’t make being at your side seem at all appealing, when you’d clearly rather be a part of my life than your own.”

The wound is too raw, but she tests him. “It could have been different,” he finds himself saying. “We could have had everything.”

“And Poe? I suppose you would have been happy to keep him around? You wouldn’t have let them all destroy each other, including him?”

“You wouldn’t have missed him.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Rey says, filled with that gloriously aggravating righteous anger. “I know one thing. You wouldn’t have been able to honestly say you didn’t miss him.”

Kylo narrows his eyes.

“You think I can’t see what you still feel for him? You think you’re the only one who can walk minds?”

“He’s nothing and he’s nothing really to you. You love his cock more than the rest of him.”

“You know that’s not true! If you can see my thoughts you know that’s not true!”

“If it isn’t true, then why are you so angry? Why all the defensiveness?”

“Fuck you,” Rey hisses again, and storms off.

Kylo assumes she is returning to Dameron’s side in the infirmary, where she can soothe her bruised soul, reassuring herself that she truly cares for him. She will stroke his brow and hold his hand and when he wakes, she’ll smile at him and make him laugh.

She does care for Dameron, Kylo knows. But she cares less than she wants to, and that’s why she is angry.

Kylo is still between them.

-

_I love you,_ Rey thinks, trying out the words in her head while Poe sleeps beside her.

They don’t quite fit.

She gnaws at her lip.

“I love you,” she whispers out loud, and Poe breathes in, and out, and in, and out.

Frustrated, Rey collapses onto her back and stares at the ceiling.

Why doesn’t she? Poe is so, so good, and he makes her happy. He makes her laugh and he treats her like she truly matters. To him, personally, and to the Resistance, too; he makes her feel important.

But Poe hasn’t said that he loves her, either, and maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t love her like he loved Ben.

Kylo.

It shouldn’t matter anyway. Kylo was being an ass, seeking to provoke, and Rey shouldn’t spend one second thinking about what he said.

But she is.

She turns her head so she can see Poe, his profile as he sleeps. He is angled slightly towards her, his palm open and fingers outstretched. He has such lovely hands, and Rey didn’t know it was possible to feel as good as he can make her feel with those hands. He is a beautiful man, physically and in his heart, and knowing that he cares for her should be enough.

Rey reaches out as Poe sleeps.

It is a violation, as bad as Kylo watching them together through the bond, because Poe has not asked for it, and he has not offered his permission. It is a violation of his trust, the same as Rey not telling him about her connection to Kylo. She knows what happened to him on the _Finalizer._

But Rey reaches out.

He is dreaming, just fragments of images, flying, a woman with dark hair Rey recognizes from a picture Poe keeps, BB-8 racing down a corridor. Rey goes deeper, past the flickering dreamscape Poe is lost in, to what rests below his conscious thoughts. He resists, but only a little; his mind is too quiet in sleep to feel much threat.

She finds the place where he keeps her, and pushes. The moment he first saw her on D’Qar, fleeting, overcome with concern for Finn. Again in the control room, piecing the map together, then briefly while she sat by Finn’s side and again when she left on the _Falcon._ Rey is surprised by how he seems to treasure these glimpses, before he had even known her, moments Rey was unaware he was even looking. He noticed her as a pretty face, but also as someone Finn valued, which made her someone Poe valued.

She sees their first meeting, but as Poe saw it; the moment he walked out of the tunnel on Crait and saw her moving the rocks. He had all but lost hope and there she had been, like a savior, like the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. On the _Falcon_ he says, _I know,_ and Rey smiles at him, and he wants to be everything she needs.

Rey flits through a head full of memories and she can feel how deeply he cares for her, how much he respects her, how truly amazing he finds her. He looks at her carefully adjusting BB-8’s antenna and thinks, _I love you,_ and Rey gasps and finds herself thrown out of his head.

Poe is still peacefully slumbering, his breathing even.

Rey, in turn, is wild-eyed and panting, breath heaving. _He does,_ she thinks, _he does,_ but he hasn’t said it.

Is he worried what she will say, or what she won’t say?

She strokes her hand over the side of his face, feeling the jagged line where his wound still heals. There is another on his chest that will likely scar, and another on his thigh that might. She kissed them before they went to bed, and Poe had shuddered beneath her lips. She wants to love him, beautiful, good, simple Poe, who thinks so highly of her, who thinks she is better than she thinks herself.

But she can’t say it.

-

Kylo’s room feels empty like it never has before.

He enjoys solitude. He enjoys quiet and he enjoys to be left alone. He has no need for company, as some do.

But he finds that often now as he sits, he wishes that Rey would surface, that their connection would make itself known again. He thinks of her on her rebel base with her rebel lover and it isn’t jealousy or loneliness but still, something burns at him.

Dameron. Force-sensitive as a brick.

_You think I can’t see what you still feel for him?_

Bantha piss.

Dameron had been afraid of him, in the end. He had feared Kylo’s abilities and what he could do with them. He will fear Rey’s power, too.

Or at least, he should.

Rey pretends to be so good, so pure, and Dameron likely sees her that way. But Rey is not as innocent as she seems. Kylo remembers her on Starkiller, unbridled rage and fury, seeking vengeance for Han Solo, for the traitor. Untrained and so, so powerful. He remembers her, too, in Snoke’s throne room; he sees her in his dreams.

No true Jedi fights as viciously as Rey does.

She seeks to hide what she is, even from herself. She seeks to bury it, like she seeks to bury her connection to Kylo. She wraps herself up in Dameron instead, her foolish, idealistic lover.

It will end the same way as it did for Kylo, in fear and hurt and distrust, in someone walking away. People like Rey, like Kylo, they aren’t meant for those like Dameron, like the traitor, lesser beings who can’t understand.

Then Kylo’s room will not be so empty, because Kylo will be the only one left for Rey to walk to.

-

Rey is walking through Poe’s mind again as he sleeps in their bed. His mind comforts her, though it is cluttered and loud.

And his mind has answers to questions that Rey is afraid to ask.

In his head there is a skinny, pale, black-haired boy, behind a closed door. The door is Poe’s way of blocking him off, symbolically sectioning away that part of his life, from others and perhaps even from himself, but the door is easy for Rey to open.

The boy’s name is Ben and Poe loves him. Poe loves him as they climb trees, as they race on speeders, as Poe pushes Ben into a lake and Ben comes up spluttering and swearing. Poe loves him as they kiss beneath the night sky and Poe loves him as he walks onto a shuttle and the bay door closes. Poe loves him as he sneaks into Ben’s room and as Ben comes running to take his hand; he loves him across long distances and he loves him as Ben walks away.

Poe loves him still when they are shouting, when Ben throws a chair without touching it and when Poe pushes Ben into a wall. Poe loves Ben when he’s crying, when he’s begging, when Ben is lying, he must be lying, it can’t be true. Poe loves Ben even when he doesn’t recognize the person Ben is becoming and he loves him when he walks away.

Poe loves Ben when Luke’s school is burning, when there are bodies on the ground, when he sits in his room and cries as a hologram of his father says, _Ben is missing._ Poe loves Ben when the first rumors of Kylo Ren reach his ears and he loves that skinny, pale, black-haired boy even as he is strapped to a chair and screaming, and he knows, he knows, he knows.

Rey is crying when she surfaces and so is Poe, tears leaking from beneath his closed eyelids, and Rey knows it is her fault. She delved too deeply, where she wasn’t welcome, bringing forth buried emotions, and she whispers, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and feels wretched.

She shouldn’t have done it. She remembers Luke saying, _you didn’t even try to resist,_ and wonders why she is like this, why Poe thinks she is so good when she’s _not._

Poe is waking, and whether he is disturbed by his own mind or by Rey doesn’t much matter. “Baby, I’m sorry,” he says, and kneels over her, stroking his thumbs down her cheeks. “I… I must have had a nightmare, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you, did you feel it? You’re crying, fuck, I’m sorry.” He presses soft kisses to her face and Rey holds him close and feels absolutely wretched.

-

Rey is striding swiftly as though she has a destination in mind but as Kylo falls in step beside her, he thinks she doesn’t actually. He thinks she is merely angry and seeking release. Her hand twitches over her lightsaber.

“How could you do it? How could you do that to him?”

It isn’t difficult to see what she means. Kylo needs only to skim the surface of her thoughts to see. “You’ve been digging,” he says. “Without permission.”

Yet she calls Kylo a monster.

“He loved you! And you loved him! How could you do that to him?”

“Maybe you should ask yourself how you could. What you’ve done is hardly different.”

“Don’t you dare turn this back on me. You tortured him, like he was nothing.”

“He was nothing, and he was in my way.”

It feels like a lie. He wonders if Rey can tell.

Rey’s anger is burning and Kylo knows she longs to strike him. He almost wishes she would; he yearns for that beautiful raw fury.

“You never deserved him,” she finally grits out.

Kylo cocks an eyebrow. “And you think you do? Have you told him yet, what we share? Have you told him that you tiptoe through his head?”

He knows she hasn’t. The way she bristles, the way heat rises in her cheeks, thrills him.

“I am nothing like you,” she hisses, but that feels like a lie, too.

“I didn’t mean to hurt him either, at first,” Kylo says, and this is true honesty. Rey has stopped, watching him. “It just started happening. You’re hurting him, too, whether you mean it or not. He isn’t meant for you.”

“But you are? You’re meant for me?”

Kylo says nothing.

“I won’t end up like you,” Rey says, fierce. “Just because you ruin everything you touch, just because you ruined the best thing in your life doesn’t mean that I will. Because I know what I have. Poe loves me.”

“He doesn’t know you.”

“He loves me,” Rey insists, and then she’s gone, like a door has shut.

_Poe loved me once, too,_ Kylo thinks.

And it changed nothing.

-

Rey goes to the hangar, where she finds Poe scrubbing scorch marks off the side of his ship while deep in conversation with BB-8. He catches sight of her and smiles, face lighting up; he doesn’t smile at anyone quite like he smiles at her. It makes Rey feel warm inside, and makes her more determined.

Kylo doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

“Hey, buddy, I’m--”

Poe’s words are muffled into Rey’s mouth as she kisses him; he drops whatever he was holding and his hands make it to her hips. Rey backs him up against his ship and he sighs, letting her kiss him deep and thorough.

“Rey, babe,” he murmurs, as she pulls back just enough to catch her breath. His hands are firm against her waist, heat leeching through her shirt.

“Come with me?” Rey suggests, tilting her head. She strokes her hand down his chest.

He was busy, but he agrees easily. There is something soft in his face, like he sees her desperation, but he doesn’t press her to explain. He never pushes; he leaves himself open so Rey can come to him if she wants but he never pushes. It’s one of her favorite things about him.

BB-8 chatters about continuing to work while they’re busy and Rey pulls Poe through the base and into their quarters. She pushes him down on their bed and can hardly be bothered to undress them; she just kisses him and kisses him and Poe moans into her mouth, his hands on her ass.

“I love you,” she says against his lips, before she can lose her nerve, and Poe stills.

He nudges her back and looks at her face; she bites her lip.

Poe brushes his fingers over her cheek, her jaw. He says, “I love you, Rey, I love you so much.”

Relief swells through her; he does love her, and he has taken her at her word, and maybe, maybe… She leans down and kisses him again, her hair falling around his face, and he pulls her to him while they rock together, still mostly clothed.

_I love you, I love you,_ she thinks, and she doesn’t know if it’s true but it feels real enough.

Poe is real, and she will keep him as long as she can.

-

She is fucking him again.

It has been hardly any time at all since Kylo walked beside Rey outside her base but the Force is connecting them again, and her emotions are so strong they hit Kylo like a blow to the face. Desperate longing and a will to believe, a need to love Dameron and to convince herself that she does. She wants it to be true so badly that Kylo thinks she might even have convinced herself it is.

He doesn’t need to search her thoughts; they are laid bare before him.

“Please, please,” she is saying, and he thinks Dameron’s face is between her legs. Dameron was always so… enthusiastic.

Rey is shuddering and mewling and she is wide open; it seems simple to just… sink in.

Everything intensifies. Rey’s confused emotions, her desperation, her pleasure. Kylo knows, on an intellectual level, that he has not actually just come, but he feels as though he has all the same. He feels connected to her, like they are the same, and it feels like how they should be.

His eyes are open and there is solid muscle and skin and bone beneath his hands, small hands, delicate wrists. He looks at Dameron’s curly head, that thick dark hair Kylo had loved to sink his fingers into, and Dameron looks up, and their eyes meet.

Dameron smiles and Kylo’s breath hitches; he doesn’t know if that’s all Rey or if it’s him, too. He hasn’t seen that smile in years and he feels blown back by the force of being on the receiving end of it again. It used to make his knees weak.

He almost can’t fault Rey for clinging to this. Kylo remembers how it feels, to be loved by Poe Dameron.

But it isn’t actually Kylo that Dameron is smiling at. It’s Rey. It’s Rey who is tugging at his hair and it’s Rey he is murmuring, _how was that, baby?_ to, and it’s Rey Dameron is kissing.

And yet Kylo can feel the heat of his mouth, the press of his tongue, the weight of his body pressing downwards. He is feeling it through Rey but he can _feel_ it.

Rey hasn’t seemed to notice Kylo’s intrusion and there is a corner of Kylo’s mind that is fascinated by the implications of this new development.

The rest of him is, honestly, happy to lie back and be pleasured.

The hard length of Dameron’s erection is heavy against his skin – Rey’s skin – as Dameron rubs against Rey’s body, as their mouths meet. Rey scrapes her fingernails down Dameron’s spine and Kylo feels that, too. He feels it when Dameron pushes into her, cock sliding in between her thighs, and that… that is new, kriff, that is…

Rey squeezes her legs around him and Dameron kisses her neck, her throat, her breasts. He fingers her and Kylo feels like spots are exploding behind his eyes. His orgasm hits him unexpectedly, cresting on waves of pleasure, as Dameron kisses Rey’s mouth and murmurs, _I love you, I love you,_ as Rey sobs and holds him.

Kylo is wrung out when the connection breaks, when he is only on his own in his empty bed, sticky with come, and he doesn’t even know whose it is. He drags his fingertips over his lips and feels the ghost of Dameron’s kiss; his head is full of memories.

“Fuck,” he says, and doesn’t know what to feel.

-

It is never a surprise anymore, really, when Rey looks up to see Kylo Ren. She can never escape him, and maybe this is only her life now.

She rubs the back of her hand across her sweaty forehead and puts away her lightsaber. She waits for him to speak – he always does.

“You’re lying to him,” Kylo says, “and you’re lying to yourself.”

“Enlighten me,” Rey says, hoping he can hear her sarcasm.

If he can, he ignores it. “You don’t love him.”

It stings because it might be true. “You don’t know anything about me or my life.”

“That’s a lie, too.” He sounds horribly smug.

“What do you think you’re going to get out of this? I’ll come running to you, begging to be by your side? You’re pathetic, and you’re delusional if you still think that can happen.”

“I’m not the delusional one, playing at being the happy, perfect girlfriend with your happy, perfect boyfriend. If he knew what--”

“He does know! He sees me, and he loves me, and he values me for who I am. He would never tell me that I’m nothing,” Rey spits, and watches Kylo recoil.

It takes him a moment to recover and she can see the play of emotions on his face. No wonder he chose to wear a mask; he looks like a frightened, vulnerable boy. “He sees you like the Jedi you wish you were. That’s why you cling to him. He sees the girl who cleared his escape route on Crait, the girl who beat Kylo Ren on Starkiller, just like his parents’ stories of Luke Skywalker. The great Jedi Knight. He saw me like that once, too.”

“And?”

“And then he realized it wasn’t true.”

His bitterness seeps through the air. Rey wonders if that’s why he did it, on the _Finalizer._ Because he is filled with bitterness for what happened years ago, with Poe, too much history unresolved. She wonders if Kylo even realizes it.

“I’m not you,” Rey says. “And I never will be.”

Kylo shrugs. “Maybe not, but you’re not the pure hero you wish you were, either, and you aren’t the good girl Dameron thinks you are. Your lies will poison your relationship and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

The ground cracks beneath Kylo’s feet and the corner of his mouth twitches upwards. “There she is,” he says, and the connection breaks.

Rey trains with her saber until she is red-faced and panting, and Finn comes to collect her for dinner.

-

In Kylo’s dream he is fighting with Rey at his back.

They move perfectly in tandem, sensing each others’ movements, connected as they should be. Kylo feels whole, like he is where he belongs and like Rey is where she belongs, with him. She is something to him, and he is something to her.

But when their last enemy falls and Kylo looks to Rey in triumph, she is reaching out her hand to someone else.

Dameron.

A cold chill shudders down Kylo’s back and then he is in the Yavin 4 jungle, he is Ben, and Poe is holding his hand. Ben is safe and warm and loved, and the air is thick and humid but Ben doesn’t mind; he doesn’t mind anything when Poe is here.

Only now Poe is pulling away, and there is accusation in his eyes, betrayal, disbelief, and Poe is saying, _how could you,_ and he doesn’t understand, but Ben knows he made a mistake. He made a mistake, it’s his fault Poe is pulling away, but Poe doesn’t even try to understand, he doesn’t know how hard it is, and he’s wrong, too, but it’s too late, and Poe is Dameron now, lines around his eyes, stubble on his jaw, and he is holding Rey’s hand and walking away.

Kylo wants to shout but his throat has closed up; he can only watch them walking away.

He wakes with the contents of his desk floating in the air in his quarters; he lets it all drop with a crash.

Then there is silence as he lies in his empty bed.

-

Poe says it all the time now.

_I love you._

He says it before they go to bed and he says it when they wake; he says it when they part and when they come back to each other. He says it while they’re in the hangar making repairs and he says it when he’s watching her train, when she is sweaty and red-cheeked.

Rey rarely says it back; Poe never seems to mind. He kisses her knuckles and looks at her like she is the most precious thing in all the galaxy. His mother’s wedding ring hangs around his neck and just looking at it makes Rey feel horrible, like she is taking advantage of him, of his love, of his trust, of his respect. She doesn’t think she can ever be the person who would deserve that ring but she knows that Poe is beginning to want her to be.

_I love you,_ he gasps into her skin with Rey’s fingers curled around him; _I love you,_ he breathes out when he is deep inside her; _I love you,_ he says on a laugh when they get tangled up trying to position themselves. He says it with warmth in his eyes and Rey thinks, _Kylo is right. I don’t deserve him._

So many lies, but Rey can’t bring herself to tell him.

She loves the way he looks at her. She is afraid to lose it.

-

Rey is not so open this time, not so distracted, with her back against the wall and her legs around Dameron’s waist. Well, she is distracted, clearly, but she hisses out a breath and Kylo knows she knows he’s there. He wonders…

It isn’t as easy as it was before, to push in, and Rey pushes back. But her focus is all over the place, confused by her lust, and she can’t quite keep him out. Kylo sinks into her mind and Rey is swearing, but her fingernails are scraping the back of Dameron’s neck and Kylo can feel Dameron bite her collar bone.

_Yes,_ he thinks, _yes,_ and feels full, warm from the inside out, and doesn’t contemplate what it means that he enjoys this so much.

“Yes,” Rey says, and Kylo can’t tell if she means to say it or if she’s saying it because he’s thinking it, their minds linked. “Yes, yes.”

She made an effort to keep him out but she doesn’t even try to kick him back out once he’s in. She knows he’s there and she lets him stay, feeding off her emotions, sharing what she is feeling. She could stop the whole thing; she could tell Dameron.

But she doesn’t.

_You let me in,_ Kylo thinks, and Rey is moaning, muffling it into Dameron’s hair, her face pressed to his temple. Kylo can smell his shampoo and feel the texture of his soft curls against his skin, and for a moment the sense memory of it is overwhelming.

_I love you, Ben, stars, I love you, I don’t think I could ever love anyone so much--_

It is Kylo who stops it, forcing himself out of Rey’s head, watching her for a moment as she climaxes, and then he is back to himself, kneeling on his own cold floor, nothing there but his bare quarters.

There is sweat on his skin and it could be anyone’s; the smell of Dameron’s hair lingers for hours.

-

Kylo is gone.

Poe thrusts up into Rey and she leaves scratches down his back; she closes her eyes, still gasping into his hair, as she feels him come. He presses kisses along the arch of her neck as he lets his knees buckle and they tumble down to the floor.

“Sorry,” he says, “sorry, babe, I’m worn out. Old bones, you know.”

Rey swats the back of his head but she is only half-focused on him; the rest of her is thinking about how close Kylo had been, and how she had done nothing. She is ashamed because she hadn’t hated it.

_Kriff,_ she thinks. _Kriff, Poe._

He would hate her, if he knew. She has Kylo in her head, and Kylo is as good as in their bed.

And Rey does nothing.

-

Kylo is almost relieved when days pass and he doesn’t see Rey.

His dreams have been strange and his thoughts linger on what he would rather not contemplate. He knows his temper has been even shorter than usual; everyone skirts around him and few dare to make eye contact.

_I love you, Ben, stars, I--_

Ridiculous.

Rey will burn her relationship to the ground soon. It is only a matter of time. She cannot let go of Kylo, and she uses and abuses Dameron. They don’t fit. They never will. Kylo knows from experience.

_I don’t think I could ever love--_

Stop.

Rey will accept the truth in time. She already accepts that she and Kylo are entwined. She accepted him in her head, in her bed, as she fucked her lover. The guilt will eventually tear her apart, and she will tire of the lies she keeps. Her relationship walks on a knife’s edge; it cannot last.

Dameron will be appalled, disgusted, betrayed, if Rey tells him. If she doesn’t, the knowledge of it will fester until she can’t bear it. She will go on until she can no longer keep up the pretense, that she is only the sweet girl, the pure-hearted Jedi, that Dameron wants her to be.

And he will bore her. He cannot match what she can do like Kylo can. Dameron can’t offer her the push and pull, the power, the understanding that Kylo can.

Her relationship is doomed.

Kylo will take her hand when she realizes it.

_Or it will be like Poe,_ a voice whispers in Kylo’s mind. _Rey walking away just like he did, and just like she did on the_ Supremacy.

No.

Kylo looks out at a formation of stormtroopers readying for deployment and tells himself he will have everything he wants.

-

Rey doesn’t mean to do it.

They are fooling around, laughing, mock-tussling, her and Poe. Poe teases her into a race to the hangar and cheats; Rey doesn’t even think. She reacts, and her hand is out, and Poe is frozen in place.

She releases him, horrified, and Poe stumbles a bit as he meets her gaze.

There is fear in his eyes and Rey can’t help the way she reaches out, seeking, finding the place where he is thinking, _no, Ben, don’t,_ and she realizes she has become just like Kylo.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps. “I’m sorry.”

But Poe blinks, shaking his head, and he says, “It’s okay, Rey, I know you didn’t mean it. It’s okay.”

But it’s not okay.

Later, in their quarters, Rey wonders who is worse: Kylo Ren, or her.

Poe is going over specs on his datapad and Rey sits and mends a tear in her wrap; or at least, that’s what she is pretending to do. In reality she can’t get out of her own head.

She had been so certain she could never be like Kylo but she is sliding down a path to him all the same. She doesn’t have control of her own abilities, or her own mind. She lets her emotions get the better of her.

And she let Kylo in.

If she had told Poe, then Poe would have known about all of it. About the bond, about the lies, about Rey’s forays into his mind. He would know that she is afraid of who she really is, that she might truly be like Kylo, that she has anger and vengeance within herself that she indulges. He would know that she is tempted by the possibility of what she could be and what she could do. He would know that she invaded his mind even knowing how it would hurt him, knowing what he’s been through; he would know that she rifled through his most private emotions and memories. He would know that there is a part of her that still believes in Ben Solo, that still believes that Kylo Ren can make a better choice, if he only let himself. He would know that she has to believe that because she can feel herself toeing the same line that Kylo does; perhaps in his place, she would have ended up like him. She fears it.

And Poe would know that she doesn’t love him.

So who is worse, her or Kylo? Kylo invades their privacy but Rey allows him to, and then she keeps that information from Poe. She lets him believe nothing is wrong. She lets him believe that she didn’t know he loved her until he said the words, and she lets him believe that when she said the words to him, she was certain she meant them.

He glances up and catches her watching him, the mending in her lap forgotten. He smiles at her, with that warm crinkling by his eyes. The thin chain around his neck catches the light.

Rey makes herself smile back.

Finn comes to the door and asks them if they want to come have a drink; Rose has cooked something up. Poe is highly skeptical but never turns down anything new; Rey goes along because she can’t think of a good reason not to.

She watches Poe laugh and wishes she were better.

-

Kylo’s dreams are still troubled and once when he jerks awake, panting in his bed, he feels that pull, and there is Rey.

She is with Dameron, trading kisses and laughter, undressing each other. Her eyes meet Kylo’s and she doesn’t say, _can’t you put something on?_

She isn’t fighting him, and when Kylo reaches out, he does it with both his mind and his body. He opens himself up and he sinks in; he settles into Rey’s mind as he brushes his fingertips over her skin.

She shudders and gasps; Kylo sees through her eyes. He looks at Dameron, older and more careworn now but still as stupidly pretty as he used to be. His hair falls in waves over his forehead as he bends down and grazes teeth over Rey’s breasts; when Kylo moans he doesn’t know if it’s him or if it’s Rey.

_What are you doing?_ he hears Rey whisper to him, but he ignores her.

It doesn’t matter. He just… He just wants…

This is about Rey; he is only showing her what she truly wants and who she truly is. She belongs with him. They would be _everything_ together. He could make her feel just like this; he could –

Rey drags her fingertip along the cleft of Dameron’s ass and she presses in; Dameron makes this sound, this wrung-out sound like he used to when – when –

Kylo pushes deeper until he feels enmeshed with Rey’s mind, her thoughts all around him and his seeping through to her. He isn’t sure where he ends and she begins, and he shivers with pleasure and lust and desire.

“Rey,” Dameron says as they move together, “Rey,” and the metal of the ring he wears around his neck is cool where it hangs down and rubs against Rey’s skin.

Rey’s hands slide from his back to his neck to his face; they kiss a moment, messy, and breathe together, and Rey says, “Poe, Poe,” and kisses him again.

Dameron looks in her eyes and it feels like he is looking into Kylo’s; he remembers this, fuck, he remembers this, _I love you, Ben, I love you, I--_

When they climax Rey shouts and her fingers dig into Poe’s skin. Poe’s eyes go wide and Kylo _feels_ him, just for a moment, the smallest instant of recognition, and in his head he hears, _Ben,_ Poe’s voice, echoing from Rey’s head through Kylo’s. It no longer feels like Rey and Kylo, or Poe and Rey; it feels like all of them, interconnected, minds and bodies, in Rey’s rebel bed on her rebel base.

Poe’s breath is coming hot and heavy against Rey’s face and there is confusion in his dark eyes.

_Poe, Poe, Poe,_ someone is saying, and it might be Ben, it might –

Kylo yanks himself free and his bed feels empty and cold with no one in it but himself.

-

Rey doesn’t know how to explain what just happened and she isn’t sure if she even understands. All she knows is that if she is lying to herself about Poe, then she isn’t the only one.

She and Poe get dressed in silence. Poe is strangely subdued and Rey doesn’t know what she should do. Pretend nothing happened? Try to figure out what Poe noticed, if he noticed anything at all?

Come clean?

In the end it’s a simple question, with a complicated answer.

“What was that?”

Rey looks across the room at Poe. He looks vulnerable, standing there with his sleeves rolled up and a lost expression on his face. She wants to reassure him.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she says, and hates herself a little.

“Don’t play games with me, Rey, and don’t lie to me.” Poe takes one step towards her. “I might not have the smallest notion of what it means to have the Force but I know when there’s something weird going on. Tell me what that was.”

The words come tumbling out of Rey’s mouth and it’s something like relief to finally give voice to it. “I’m bonded to Kylo Ren. I know I should have told you but I couldn’t, I… The Force is connecting us. He can see me, and I can see him, and sometimes… sometimes it’s like he’s really there with me.” She finishes on a whisper. “With us.”

Poe’s eyes are wide and he wets his lips, like he is stalling for time as he figures out what to say. “With us?”

Rey can’t look at him anymore. She focuses her eyes on a spot on the wall to the left of his head. “He was watching us, and then he… It started only a short time ago, he started… It was like he could be inside my mind, when we… when we’re…”

“When we fuck,” Poe says, flat and short.

“Yes.”

“And you thought that was, what, fine? Not something you needed to mention?”

“I thought it would hurt you.”

The laugh that escapes Poe’s mouth is like nothing Rey has ever heard before. Her eyes are drawn to him again.

“So you did think about me. But your solution was to keep lying?”

Rey can’t say anything.

“I told you what he did to me. I told you, and I… I told you about him. How could you?”

“I’m sorry,” Rey whispers, and she knows how utterly inadequate it is.

“I just…” Poe runs a shaky hand through his hair. “I don’t understand. Help me understand why you would keep this from me. Any of it.”

“I thought…” She swallows. “I thought you would hate me, if you knew. I was ashamed. How could you look at me the same if you knew I was connected to Kylo Ren?”

“Because I know you! Blast, Rey, I know you. And if I’d known about this maybe I could have helped you, or Leia could have, something! Instead of letting this… Oh, stars. You let him in our lives; you let him into our relationship, into our bed, into my… into my head, Rey,” and his voice is trembling.

Rey wants to go to him so badly but she knows that’s wrong. She knows he will push her away and she thinks it would break her if he did. “I didn’t think. I was scared.”

“I understand, but that’s why you have me, for fuck’s sake. To help you. We’re meant to help each other. And now I don’t know… What else have you been lying to me about?”

Now, she thinks. Now she has to say it. “I went in your head,” she says softly. “I… To see. I went in your head. I saw myself, and how you felt about me, and then I… I watched you with him. Your memories. Ben Solo.”

For a moment Rey isn’t sure what he will do; if he’ll scream or shout at her or burst into tears. Then he goes over to the desk and heaves the chair into the wall; it hits with a loud, resounding thud. He falters for a second, knees buckling, like he might fall.

Then he straightens and looks at her, eyes red. His mother’s ring has slipped out of his collar to rest in front of his shirt. “I told you what he did to me. I told you.”

“I…”

“Did you see it? Why I finally walked away? When you were poking around in my head, did you see it?”

When Poe pauses, Rey shakes her head, eyes lowered.

Poe clenches his fist at his side. “Because he tried to make me stay with him. He was becoming someone I didn’t recognize and he didn’t like me pushing, so he tried to push me into what he wanted, like I was a puppet on a string only he could pull.”

_No, Ben, don’t,_ Rey remembers, and the fear in Poe’s eyes. She was becoming like him, Kylo, and for Poe it was like doing it all over again.

Rey has to swallow past her hoarseness before she can speak. “I… I didn’t know.”

“I would have told you, if you’d asked. I would have told you anything.”

Her insides are knotting up and she knows she can never, never make this okay. “I’m sorry,” she says, voice a rough whisper.

“I love you,” Poe says, like he has said so many times before, but it sounds hoarse and desperate now. “That’s what makes this so… Kriff, I love you, and I don’t know if I can ever trust you again. How could you?”

“Poe, please,” Rey begs. “Let me…” She doesn’t know what she means, or what she wants. She doesn’t know what to do but she can’t bear him leaving, and maybe she can explain, maybe she can… “Poe, please let me, kriff, let me explain, or, or…”

“I can’t… I can’t look at you,” Poe says, and walks out the door.

Rey sits on the edge of their bed and hides her face in her hands. Her shoulders shake; her eyes are burning. She knows Kylo is here now, watching.

She says, “Not now.”

When she looks up, he’s gone.

-

Kylo thought getting what he wanted would feel better than this.

There is no sense of victory, though he knows that if Rey’s relationship isn’t quite broken yet, it will be soon. He was right, but he feels no satisfaction.

Looking at Rey, crushed and miserable, didn’t feel like triumph.

His head feels dull, and his room is still empty.

He is no longer certain that even without Dameron, Rey will find her way to him. He isn’t sure he ever really believed it; he thinks he simply wanted to.

Rey refused his hand. He doesn’t know what will make her take it.

He thinks… he thinks…

_I love you, Ben, I--_

_I didn’t mean to hurt him either. He isn’t meant for you._

_And then he realized it wasn’t true._

Dameron doesn’t understand Rey like Kylo can, and Kylo knows because Dameron hadn’t understood him either. But Kylo had wanted him to, so badly and for so long. For so long he had thought it might actually work. He had even tried – He regrets –

_How could you, Ben, I would have done anything, but you –_

He remembers the recurring image from his dreams, Dameron and Rey walking away from him.

He wonders how he could have been so stupid.

-

The heat from the sun is warm on Rey’s face as she sits outside, thinking about meditating. She knows she won’t be able to manage it but she thinks maybe it’s worth something that she is at least thinking about it.

Poe sits beside her. The foot of space between their bodies feels as wide as a chasm.

“Did you love me?” he asks. “Did you love me really?”

Rey closes her eyes and wants to cry. “I don’t know,” she confesses. “I… I wanted to, I wanted to so badly but I… I don’t know.”

She supposes now she will never get the chance to find out if she could have.

“Do you love him?”

“No,” Rey says, and hates that she can’t leave it there. What comes next will hurt him, but Rey knows Poe deserves her honesty, and should have had it all along. “But he is… part of me.”

She opens her eyes and there is Kylo.

There is always, always Kylo.

“Is this what you wanted?” she asks. “Are you happy now?”

Kylo says nothing.

Poe is watching her, and she wants to reach across the distance and grasp his hand. Beautiful, good, simple Poe, who loved her.

But she doesn’t reach for him because she knows she relinquished that right. Only Poe can do that now, and she thinks that not even Poe’s huge heart can forgive this.

Kylo moves, and he fits himself into the space between them, like a looming shadow.

None of them are touching, and Rey doesn’t know what comes next.

“Is he there?” Poe asks, low and curious and with more reservation than he usually displays. “Is he here now?”

“Yes,” Rey says.

“Can he see me? Hear me?”

“No.”

Poe pauses for several long seconds. “Tell him… tell him… Oh, fuck him, I don’t care what you tell him.”

Kylo is watching her, like he knows that she is carrying on a conversation with Poe about him.

“Poe says fuck you.”

Kylo’s lips twitch upwards. “That seems fitting.”

Poe stands up and moves in front of Rey. “Where is he?”

Rey tilts her head in Kylo’s direction and Poe’s gaze slides sideways. He raises his hand, fingers twitching, and then he lowers it.

Kylo stands up, black cloak swirling, and now they are nearly in each others’ space, except neither of them can see the other. Poe’s head only reaches Kylo’s shoulder.

Rey wonders what they would say to each other, if they could. She wonders if it would matter, if it would help, or if it would only make them feel worse.

She stands then, too, between them at their sides, facing them. “I can…” She swallows. “If you want. I can let him in, Poe.”

That lost, open vulnerability is in his face again and his eyes are frightened when they meet hers. He fingers his mother’s ring. “I don’t think… I… Fuck,” he swears softly. “He’ll see me? But I won’t see him?”

“We can try something. Like… like before.” When Poe’s eyes widen even further, lips parting, Rey interjects, “But he won’t be in your head, Poe, only mine. I promise. And he won’t see anything that could hurt us, or the Resistance.”

“As if I care about your pathetic Resistance,” Kylo mutters. “You’ll be squashed under my heel soon enough.”

“Only if you want to do this,” Rey says to Poe, ignoring Kylo.

Finally Poe nods. “Just… just… Do it.”

Rey wants to touch him but she knows she can’t. Instead she looks at Kylo and envisions bringing her mental walls down. “Okay,” she says, and feels Kylo enter.

Then all she can see is Poe, and she reaches out, unsure if she’s doing it herself or if it’s Kylo urging her limb, but she brushes her fingertips over his neck and she gasps, and Poe gasps, and their eyes are wide open, and she knows he isn’t seeing her. He is seeing Kylo. The intensity of it rivals that moment in bed though they are merely standing in the sunshine, and she feels linked, connected, like in her deepest wishes and dreams and hopes, like everything she has ever longed for is right here.

Then it breaks.

She can hear herself breathing, and Poe, and Kylo is standing beside them again.

In the bright sunlight everything feels wrong again. Now it is only Rey and Poe and Kylo and the mess they have made. The mess Rey has made. The ruins of her relationship and Kylo always there, lurking in the background, so that Rey cannot escape him.

“That’s enough,” Poe says, his eyes searching, looking where he must think Kylo is, and then to Rey. “That’s enough.”

“Poe,” Rey says, and wants to touch him.

“That’s enough,” he says again.

To one side there is Poe, beautiful, good, simple Poe, whom Rey should have loved, and to the other there is Kylo, with his complication and his promise, tied to Rey no matter what she does. In the center stands Rey, just Rey, and she seems always to make the wrong choice.

She looks down at her palm, where she has dug her nails into her skin to leave reddened crescent lines in her flesh. Always the wrong choice, and perhaps the problem is that she has never understood what it is she actually wants, only what she thinks she should.

She doesn’t think it matters anymore. Her heart aches.

“Enough,” she says to herself, and walks back to base, leaving both Poe and Kylo behind her.

**_End_ **

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr [here](http://serceleste.tumblr.com).


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